Just managed to get the following viruses/trojans cleaned from my system: AgentAE Smal.IX Alchemic.A BKDR HACDEF.73.B StartPage.AX HackerDefender.sys Additionally, CSWShredder detected (and hopefully removed) the last traces of Googlems. (Note: all of the above were finally successfully cleared from safe mode.) McAfee Internet Security v6 virus scanner has stopped giving virus alerts. Rescans show no further infections. The McAfee firewall has stopped giving me alerts that "svhost.exe" is trying to access the Internet...and now my start and search pages stay where I want them to be. The last thing that I cannot get worked out is this: Right clicks on executables crash the Windows Explorer display and sometimes Exploer itself - this is ANY executalbe. Additionally, right clicks on start menu items in the upper section (set in classic mode)do very much the same thing and sometimes simply leave me with a black screen requiring a restart. It seems that I am SO close to wrapping all of this mess up. Any advice that any of you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. WAP

WAP, are you by any chance running Webroots Spysweeper V3.0? One of those releases had a problem intergrating with explorer and would cause exactly what you are describing. If so, open SpySweeper and under options, uncheck "add to explorer context menu". Hope this helps.

L.B. - Thanks for your reply. You're right, I was running SpySweeper but do not keep it sweeping actively. I also don't seem to have and option to integrate. Perhaps it is a default in the version that I downloaded that is not configurable. I actually started having this problem the day that the viruses/trojans started giving me problems. In fact, McAfee and Spysweeper are reporting them again <sigh> If I cannot find an option to "unintegrate" I think that I'll try removing SS and seeing what happens. I'll keep you posted. Thanks.

Incidentally, the day I started having those problems I downloaded or used a few other spyware programs. I ran McAfee again in safe mode and found 2 more instances of "HackerDefender" which it cleaned. I also reran CWSShredder just in case and, unlike the previous instance, came up clean. Finally, I went through my Add/Remove Programs and uninstalled a number of adaware programs in addition to some shareware media utilities, rebooted into normal mode and the right-click problem is gone. Upon reboot, McAfee gave me a warning that "LSA Shell" (via sass.exe) was trying to access the Internet. I wasn't sure so I denied it access. I have a feeling that I may be posting more to the security group soon and that I may have some kind of "dropper" on the system that will continue to cause problems. Thanks for your help in this.